New 'Star Trek: Discovery' Captain Casting Suggests Dueling Ships

Lucius Malfoy will give up Apparating in favor of a transporter beam as Jason Isaacs —of Harry Potter and The OA fame —joins Starfleet in the role of Captain Lorca on Star Trek: Discovery. According to reports, Captain Lorca is the Captain of the USS Discovery, while Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou is the Captain of the USS Shenzhou. This casting further confirms the idea that two starships will be central to the story of the new Star Trek show, at least at first.

On Tuesday, Entertainment Weekly reported on Jason Isaacs’s casting in Discovery and seems to confirm that Lorca is “running the show” on the USS Discovery. Still, if old Trek tradition holds, Captain Lorca might not be the Captain of the Discovery for the entire run of the series. In fact, it’s also not clear if Lorca will even be in the whole series. Could Michelle Yeoh as Captain Georgiou take over for Jason Isaacs’s Captain Lorca at some point? Could the USS Shenzhou be destroyed at some point in the series, or will it serve as the antagonist crew to the USS Discovery in the show’s narrative?

Because little has been confirmed about the actual story of Star Trek: Discovery, any of the above are possibilities. If Jason Isaacs is being cast as a villain, perhaps an evil Star Fleet captain, it would obviously be deliciously cool since he played the elder Malfoy so well in the Harry Potter films. But if he’s a good guy, would Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou become a bad guy? Because this is Star Trek, it’s also reasonable to assume the roles of these characters will be more layered than the binary roles of “good” and “evil.”

The release date for Star Trek: Discovery is unclear. Here’s everything we know about it so far.